Last week, the first election in 50 years without the full protection of the federal Voting Rights Act propelled Donald Trump to the White House.
Trump will assume the presidency because of the Electoral Colleges influence nearly a million more people cast ballots for Hillary Clinton as of November 15. The election was also marked by low turnout, with tens of millions of eligible voters choosing not to participate at all. Yet there has been relatively little discussion about the millions of people who were eligible to vote but could not do so because they faced an array of newly-enacted barriers to the ballot box.

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Their systematic disenfranchisement was intentional and politically motivated. In the years leading up to 2016, Republican governors and state legislatures implemented new laws restricting when, where, and how people could vote??laws that disproportionately harmed students, the poor, and people of color. In several instances, lawmakers pushing such policies said explicitly that their goal was suppression of voters who favor the Democratic Party.

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Three such states serve as case studies for the effectiveness of these voting restrictions: Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Florida.
All three elected staunchly conservative governors during President Obamas terms. All three implemented voting restrictions that affect millions of people.

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President Obama won all three states in 2008, and won all but North Carolina in 2012, while Hillary Clinton lost all three of those states this year.